Ship Of Death td-28 Read online

  "You said you were going to kill yourself."

  "I was, but I decided to live."

  "Rash judgment," Remo said.

  He finally got rid of her by entering his apartment, where Chiun was talking to the ambassador. Zarudi had been receiving many inquiries about his two new security men. There had been rumors that someone had encountered the Scythian terrorists and defeated some of them. Was it either Chiun or Remo?

  "The hand is silent as the night," Chiun said, and the ambassador bowed.

  After he left, Remo said, "The hand is silent as the night. What the hell does that mean?"

  "It's good for the customers," Chiun said. "They like it."

  "I don't know," Remo said.

  "You will wash the pain from your blood."

  "What are you talking about?" Remo asked.

  "You have not left America easily."

  "I don't mind leaving America," Remo said heatedly. "I don't mind not working for a place that is so fouled up. I just don't care."

  All that night, Remo kept repeating that he did not care.

  He did not care that night when he and Chiun went to the first night of the two-evening celebration and shipwarming party. He even allowed someone to put a glass of champagne in his hand, until he realized what it was.

  "You know, it's good to change around employers," Remo told Chiun.

  "Then why have you poured that drink in that man's pocket?" asked Chiun.

  "Oh," said Remo. But he didn't care. He certainly didn't care about leaving America's employ.

  He didn't care when he saw Helena sitting in the main box on the balcony, overlooking the giant auditorium-stadium. She nicely filled a fine black dress with a single silver and diamond pin just below her soft rising breasts. She was alone and Remo wondered what she was doing in a box seat that was obviously designed to be the royal box.

  From the Iranian box forty feet away, Remo yelled, "I thought you were going to commit suicide."

  "I have a reason to live," yelled back Helena.

  "Sorry to hear that," said Remo.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Under the new Freedom-of-Information Resolution by which the United Nations had abolished press coverage of its activities and barred all journalists from Ship of States, there was no television coverage of the shipwarming party.

  But cameras were at work. From hidden locations around the stadium, they zeroed in on Remo and transmitted his image to the secret city of rooms deep inside the body of the ship. At least one camera kept transmitting back television images of Chiun.

  The ship had initially been flooded with TV cameras so that delegates could be spotted anywhere and marked against daily progress sheets. Observers had been told that when all the sheets were programmed after just a few days' observation, computers could then calculate where anyone would be with a high probability of being correct. People followed rhythmic patterns with as little imagination as a tree, the difference being that trees never thought they were anything but servants of the weather, growing leaves by the sun, dropping them at frost. People, however, thought they acted from free will. Yet there were times of the day when they would need company and other times when they needed to be alone, times when they felt alive, and other times when they felt drowsy, and all these came from an internal clock that they could not read.

  Except for Remo.

  Since the incident at the elevator and in the passages, Remo had been given a constant track, eye observed and taped, because it was possible to get a rhythm on someone from an intense four-hour observation.

  Oscar Walker believed that. He was betting his life on it. Number One had said he wanted it and Oscar Walker had promised it and now, deep in the ship, Oscar tried to organize all the information taken since midafternoon when there was the first warning report on Remo.

  The problem for Oscar Walker in the twenty-seventh year of his life was that there was too much information on this person and much of it clearly did not read out properly.

  Cambridge University had been nothing like this. They had never told Oscar that there were human beings walking around with a breathing rate more akin to a three-toed sloth than to an apparent thirty-year-old man. More confusing was that the breathing rhythm was exactly that of the old Oriental in the Iranian section, an apparent eighty-year-old. Two new security men, Iranian hired, high potential.

  Oscar Walker went over Remo's record personally. Yes, he trusted his computers but there was nothing like human eyes reading human messages in print.

  The first man Remo had met in the elevator that day and then taken his gun away… the gunman had had three years of training in Britain's Special Air Service. Well, so much for his being careless or a stranger to difficult service. SAS were just the finest commandoes in the world. Even if Oscar were British himself. He was not so British as to get himself killed by a miscalculation.

  Oscar went through the records of others lost to the Iranian-employed killing machine, Remo.

  This Remo had a cume average of 2.7 years per on the K which translated to mean that every person he had killed from the secret units on the ship had had an average of 2.7 years of anti-personnel experience. This average was lowered because he had killed several inexperienced television monitors in the melee. Moreover, he had not used weapons but his hands. All right. No trouble. Oscar Walker could deal with that. Remo's whole body was a weapon. That read out fine and took care of the peculiar breathing rate.

  But why hadn't Iran reported through any of the normal channels the ship within a ship? Nothing. All the messages in and out had decoded normal.

  Yet the recorded conversation between Remo and the old Korean of similar breathing pattern, had shown Remo was aware that the inner ship had been the secret access route of the Scyth group to get anywhere in the ship to perform terrorist acts. Yet Remo only told the old Korean… his name, Oscar saw, was Chiun… and the old Korean had done nothing.

  Number One himself had ordered a special attack on Remo that afternoon. An assault had been arranged. He had been followed by a team, moving with him and waiting. In the corridor, the cameras were running and microphones were working, and the team came out through the wall and assaulted Remo. Oscar Walker had watched on television. A monitor told him: "They'll kill him, so I don't think you've got to worry about analyzing his movements, O.W."

  Oscar not only had trouble analyzing the movements he had trouble seeing them. The cameras were well-lit, aimed from many angles. But the subject had not been attacked in the hallway; he attacked himself, and Oscar Walker had never seen such an attack.

  He played the tapes and then replayed them, and then replayed them in slow motion and all he saw were flashes of hands. He slowed the pictures down even more and still all he saw were the flashes of moving hands, moving, even in super slow motion, in a blur too fast to focus on. And then the attack team had seen the girl and fled.

  Oscar Walker's telephone board lit up.

  "Do you have a fix on that person yet?" asked a voice.

  "No sir," said Oscar Walker.

  "Number One wants it. He'll be needing it before midnight. Midnight is when he leaves the party. We want something before then."

  "Yes sir," said Walker and he knew what the word "want" meant. It was not used often but when it was, it could be very important. It could mean life.

  Walker ran several series through the facts and then he ran the facts back through the series, and tried juggling all available information in every pattern and every pattern came up going nowhere. No fix. There was no prediction of what biorhythmic clock ran these two men, Remo and Chiun. None.

  Biorhythm. Walker remembered his early interest in the subject way back when, in his college days that now seemed so long ago and so safe. It was the word that first attracted him to the small employment advertisement. Biorhythm. He had majored in biology and with the economic disaster that had been Great Britain for the last decade, he did not even expect to get anything close to his major field of study
at a living wage. He had majored in biology and computer science, and had hoped to be lucky enough to find work as an insurance clerk.

  "I can't really believe there is someone in the United Kingdom willing to pay a living wage for work in biorhythm," Walker had said.

  "We're not paying you for work in the United Kingdom."

  "I thought it looked too good," said Walker. "Where? The South Pole? Underground somewhere where I go blind? Where do you expect me to work?"

  "You're going to St. Martin."

  "In the Dutch Antilles? The vacation resort?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't have money to pay you for a vacation. I've got to be paid, not pay you."

  The employment officer smiled. When Oscar Walker found out what he would be earning, he tried very hard not to look startled. Because if he could keep calm, they might not realize they were offering him four times a normal starting salary,

  He was flown first class to Christiana Airport which looked like a Liverpool bus station surrounded by slabs of sun-bleached concrete. A chauffered limousine took him to a resort near Mullet Bay. His suite was better than a hotel. He had a maid, a butler, a cook and a woman with very big breasts and willing thighs. The woman did not talk about liberation. She had no need to be communicated with. She did not require endless foreplay. She was there. For him.

  And if she had neurotic worries, thank the Lord she shared them with someone else. She was a gem. She gave him a warm body and a closed mouth and Oscar Walker knew then that he would kill for the people who provided him this.

  Shortly thereafter, he found out that this was just what they had in mind.

  Everyone else he met was earning the same bloated salaries. But just in case money was not sufficient to earn loyalty, there were people who disappeared. Like the middle-aged action group leader who thought he could make a large bundle by selling the story of the secret luxury training grounds to Fleet Street. He was getting tired of the gross repetition of his attack moves.

  "Worse than the bloody SAS," he said.

  That day he did not return for classes and Walker was called in by his superior to explain why he had not reported the man's complaint to higher-ups.

  So they knew everything he did.

  Initiation was simple and frightening. He was kept awake two days without sleep and then at midnight in a small grove of trees, he was given a pill to swallow. The world moved in strange and luxurious shapes, in colors his eyes had never seen before. Oscar Walker assumed he was drugged. So he did not mind too much when someone handed him the head of the man who had planned to tell the Fleet Street press about the secret training center. The head fit in his palm.

  He swore loyalty to Number One in this drugged state. Number One's face seemed familiar, white hair, royal bearing, a very handsome man. Oscar Walker thought the drug might have had something to do with this perception that warm insane evening with the strange colors and the small head that fit into his hand. He slipped off to a delightful sleep that had him dreaming while awake. He dreamed there was no greater love one could have than his love for Number One.

  He had seen Number One's face before. He had seen it while at Cambridge. He had seen the face before Cambridge. He had seen that face in newspapers when he was a youngster, that silver hair. That face was always with a woman. But in that sleep on the night of the initiation, he did not know the name that came with it.

  Waking up from that sleep was like waking up with more life and breath and sunlight than he had ever known. It was waking up to the brightest morning of his life. It was waking up on a soft pillow that stretched from sunlight to sunlight with a bath of salt air all over him and waves lapping against something very close. He was aboard a ship and the pillows were silk and the air was salty. He was alive and awake. He was on silk pillows on the deck of a yacht. Small islands were far off. He saw them between his bare feet. They got smaller as the day got hotter. He looked around finally, realizing the drug had not fully worn off. There were other men lying on pillows also. Their eyes looked funny as if they were blacker than they should be. The pupils were dilated.

  Women with oiled bodies served fruits on silver trays. Oacar Walker saw his reflection in the bottom of the silver tray. His wide black pupils blocked out the blue of his eyes.

  Later in the distance, he saw another yacht. Shakily he got to his feet. He could read the name on the other yacht. Ulysses. And then he realized who the man with silver hair would be. Aristotle Thebos.

  He was Number One.

  "Love Number One. Love Number One. Love Number One," he heard someone shout. And it was his voice. He was shouting. And then all the men on the deck were shouting "Love Number One."

  And Number One appeared under lights on his great ship and told them he would feed them and protect them and lead them to power in the world.

  Everyone was given something small to hold and throw overboard as an offering to Number One. Oscar Walker was throwing his offering when a hand stopped his and made him look at it. It was a head. A small dark head the size of an orange. He had not dreamed the head. Heavy white fibers cushioned the small dark eyeless ball. White hairs. It was the former SAS member who had complained and threatened to expose the training camp.

  Someone grabbed Oscar Walker's hand and made him throw the head into the sea. From that day forth, he loved Number One with all his heart, so that when he had to do a biorhythm fix on this killer Remo who was an enemy of Number One, and he could not get a fix, it hurt him to have failed. He trembled and looked at the hand that held the head on the dragged night.

  The telephone panel lit up again.

  "Negative," Oscar Walker said softly.

  And the words he feared came back over the speaker.

  "Report to Number One."

  Trembling, Oscar Walker took three tranquilizers and washed them down with a double martini before leaving his computer console. If he was lucky, he might pass out before looking into Number One's eyes and telling him of failure.

  A sliding metal panel opened in one of the secret passageways and Oscar Walker stepped out onto a platform that was only a few feet above the level of the Atlantic Ocean. Behind him the panel slid shut. Two men ushered him onto a waiting launch. There was a small table on the launch set before a high throne-like chair. Oscar floated into a folding chair at the table. He felt the tranquilizers and the martinis begin to soften his body. His mouth seemed to want to operate without his knowledge. His lips moved from side to side without waiting for him to tell them to. He thought that was funny and laughed.

  There was a television monitor on the launch and men were looking at the televised image of the party from the great stadium and auditorium. An image of a diplomat came on. Walker recognized him.

  "He's going to spill his drink," said Walker, pointing to the screen. His voice sounded thick and far away.

  "What did you say?" someone asked.

  "That man's going to spill his drink. It's amazing he even got out of bed this morning."

  Faces moved closer to the screen to watch. The large tuxedoed diplomat with a row of medals over his chest, bowed stiffly. He held a glass of champagne and raised a toast, all over his medals.

  There was laughter on the launch and Oscar Walker felt good that he had been able to bring some humor into everyone's life,

  "When will he have sex?" someone asked, laughing.

  Oscar Walker floated in his daze of booze and pills but he knew the answer.

  "Two days from now he'll want to pork a bloody orange rind. He'll wake up like a goat," said Oscar Walker. He slumped into his chair. Then there was another voice. It was Number One's voice. Oscar Walker forced his eyelids open. Number One was sitting in the throne-like chair facing the small table.

  "Love Number One," Oscar Walker mumbled.

  "And the Iranian security team. This Remo and Chiun. When do we even the score with them?" Number One asked. His voice was steely and chill.

  "Remo and Chiun?" asked Oscar Walker with a boo
zy smile.

  "Yes," said Number One. "When can we move against them?"

  "Not on the best day you ever lived," said Oscar Walker before he passed out. They were the last words he ever said because, even though he came to, he found it impossible to talk under the Atlantic, as the heavy chains around his ankles pulled him slowly down to the bottom of the ocean. He felt sorry about not being able to speak. He had wanted to hear his voice say, one last time, "Love Number One."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Demosthenes Skouratis was already sailing under full power toward the Ship of States when the first newspaper stories arrived.

  They came across on a facsimile machine mounted in the largest cabin on the yacht, the one Skouratis used as his floating office. The machine was hooked up to Skouratis' offices in national capitals around the world and around the clock, and whenever a new edition of a newspaper came off the press, facsimiles of the front page and financial pages were radioed to Skouratis wherever he might be.

  The first night-time editions reported that Aristotle Thebos was sponsoring a two-day celebration for Ship of States and its builder, Skouratis. Each story carried the same quotations. Thebos regretted that Mr. Skouratis had not shown up for the first night's party, but no, he did not believe that Skouratis felt the Ship of States was unsafe and had, therefore, refused to set foot on it. Skouratis was never afraid to set foot on any of his other ships and so Thebos would never believe that of the great shipbuilder, Skouratis. Perhaps Skouratis would attend the second evening's celebration.

  From New York, from London, from Paris, the news stories were basically the same: Thebos, implying by denying it that Ship of States was unsafe and that Skouratis was afraid to set foot on the giant vessel.

  Skouratis had read the stories carefully. As surely as if he had Skouratis on a string, Thebos was dragging him toward the giant United Nations ship.

  "Child sticker," Skouratis swore in Greek, then crumpled the front pages and reached to drop them into a wastepaper shredder basket. But he remembered that all of them were filed each day and he carefully smoothed out the sheets and placed them in the file basket on his desk.